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Net Neutrality — Threat Or Menace?
Roblimo writes "I had a dream. In it, I was CEO of a large telecommunications company that was also a major broadband Internet provider and all five members of the FCC were stabbing me with pitchforks and yelling in my ear that my company would be treated as a common carrier, not as a special entity they couldn't regulate. That's when I woke up..."
Shitty or very Shitty?
Que the standard partisan trolls screaming about how the government should "keep their hands off of the free market". Remember folks, before posting make sure to conveniently forget that the current state of affairs is anything but a free market, and that telephone companies have been common carriers for years without the foundations of freedom this country was supposedly built on crumbling. (well, at least not because of that...)
"linux is just DOS with a UNIX like syntax" -- Galactic Dominator (944134)
Judging from the restrictions being imposed the rest of the world that should be making more of us angry. Why there are not more people up in arms about the restrictions in the middle east is beyond me.
"Maybe this world is another planet's hell"
Aldous Huxley
Side A: Net Neutrality means that I can do whatever I want with my net connection without paying different fees!
Side B: Net Neutrality causes the government to regulate what ISPs provide, and stifles free market!
Nobody is arguing true net neutrality, which is that my ISP is not allowed to regulate what content I receive through the means I have purchased. I don't care if they block ports on some plans, or limit my connectivity in other ways so long as they are not blocking sites or CHANGING the content before I receive it. If I use more bandwidth I deserve to pay more because it costs my ISP more to cater to me, but I don't want them to re-direct my web browsing (even my advertisements), I don't want them to throttle certain things that I am allowed to do, or otherwise hinder my connectivity unless it's actually because I have gone outside the bounds of my service plan (Too many GB downloaded/uploaded). Until we can stand together and support the free exchange of information without tying it together with freedom to do whatever the hell you want net neutrality will fail.
I always wonder why Americans treat regulation as something inherently bad. What is clear is that in the Western world, there are strong positive correlations between the amount of regulation of the economy and societal equality, and societal equality and general happiness. Assuming that the free market is good, and therefore regulation is bad, however, is a purely ideological stance.
While I understand that treating the government with suspicion is a healthy attitude that makes degeneration into tyranny less likely, but that is more an argument for government transparency, not for generally keeping the government out of things.
We work on an open source softswitch called FreeSWITCH http://www.freeswitch.org/
Blocked ports and content filtering can mess up Voice over IP traffic running on your broadband line which can be used as a free alternative to the "Digital Phone" services many providers offer. Some entire countries already do this type of thing like China for instance. There are ways around it using secure packets so the payload cannot be sniffed and other workarounds but it would be a huge pain if we had to do that inside the US.
Usually the word "OR" is associated with two alternatives. So when the author says "Threat or Menace", I really don't get the point he's trying to make and the distinction between the two.
Would you prefer the Internet be controlled by Big Government or Big Corporations? The government doesn't care what you think and doesn't care if it looses your business. THINK about it.
Just wondering if there are any "data only" cellular services, that is, you don't get a phone number nor do they provide phone service. I mean that's ALL they have, not a "data plan" from a normal telco, a company that *only* does cellular/mobile data service. I use a WISP, but it isn't cellular, nor mobile capable, the antenna has to be precisely aimed. The radio uses a sim card though...which made me wonder about this.
Such a cellular ISP, that charged by bandwith consumed plus a modest monthly connectivity fee, might work. It might even exist, I don't know, that's why I am asking.
As to those other bozos, the regular telcos and ISPs, etc, we need dumb pipes, then content providers. They shouldn't be *both*, that sets up the conflict of interest and it goes downhill from there.
oblig car analogy, a really bad one, for what these telcos want...
You have a real cream puff Belchfire Motors Land Dreadnought. Unfortunately, it only gets 1.5 miles to the gallon..so you have to stop a lot and fill up...now it could run on any gas, the engine is capable of it just fine, but as soon as you pull up to a non-Belchfire pump the tank cover locks up, and even if you manage to get some in, it runs like crap ..until you pull up to the Belchfire Motors fueling stations and fill up there. Then it runs perfect. But Belchfire gas costs twice as much. See, you have a consumer choice! According to Belchfire...
It's a reference to an episode of the old (1980s) Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles cartoon, I think. (I'm sure it was in TMNT but I don't know if it was in something else as well...) In one episode April O'Neil's boss Burne (basically the TMNT TV series' version of Spiderman's J.J. Jameson - the newsroom boss who is determined to make money by publishing/broadcasting stories that cast the heroes of the series in a bad light) proposes that they do a special report called "Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Threat or Menace?" - the false dichotomy there was expressing his prejudice that the TMNT could be nothing but bad.
Bow-ties are cool.
Actually, I googled it after posting - I guess "Threat or Menace" was a J.J. Jameson thing (from Spiderman)... If my memory is correct and they really did use it in TMNT, then it must have been a nod to Berne's status as TMNT's version of Jameson...
Bow-ties are cool.
if it's exactly the same service, exactly the same data, but only the transmission media or the name on the door differs, it is obscene to treat Entity A differently than Entity Z. period.
if this is supposed to be a new economy, how come they still want my old fashioned money?
You're right. The only way to get greed out of the picture is to bring in the politicians...
"My personal take on Net Neutrality is that ISPs should treat all packets equally. I do not like the idea of being forced to host all my videos on YouTube or another huge site that can afford to make special deals with broadband providers such as Brighthouse, my local cable TV monopoly, instead of on my friend Joe's Globaltap hosting service."
Ugh. Nobody "forces" Mr. Miller to host anywhere. He's more than welcome to host his videos at his friend's Joe's Globaltap hosting service, but is he expecting his friend to do this for free or give him some flat rate $5/month service? Does Mr. Miller expect his friend Joe to eat the Internet transit costs of $3 to $10 per Mbps per month which might be thousands of dollars a month for popular content while he free loads off of his friend's hosting service? Is he under the dilusion that all Internet websites operate at the same speed (http://www.digitalsociety.org/2010/07/call-the-net-neutrality-police-dailykos-loads-faster-than-foxnews/)?
The reality is that only the largest websites like YouTube can afford server transit bandwidth on the Internet and there has always been a toll to deliver content on the Internet. YouTube gives you this bandwidth for free because they value your presence and your content which attracts eyeballs and advertisers. Google loses money but they're making a huge investment gamble on the future.
Why is it that people lose all reason and sanity when it comes to the commercial Internet which is made up of all private networks and private investment? We can all oppose bad behavior like censorship of content or the blocking of legal applications on bandwidth people paid for, but Net Neutrality insists on going further to outlaw legal and voluntary premium content delivery services.
I see a lot of arguing over what "Net Neutrality" is, and how to define it. Really, I don't think it's very hard at all, and doesn't require a wall of text only the most veteran lawyers can understand. To me, "Net Neutrality" means this:
Absolutely zero regulation of the internet, or what is sent over it. No blocking, no filtering, no slowing down of traffic, no pandering to higher paying customers. Data is made up of packets, and all packets are equal.
I don't think this is a toughy by any stretch, and any attempts to over-analyze it or come to any other definition is, IMO, an attempt to create more problems.
only stupid people. Actually that's a stupid question. How can anything neutral be a menace?
"You'll get nothing, and you'll like it!"
We need a rule that if network connectivity is provided by a company which uses (or is affiliated with a company that uses) public rights-of-way for its cables, or public airwaves for its transmissions, it is a common carrier. All data shippers must receive equal treatment, and the carrier itself cannot compete in the content business.
We used to have that in the US, and it forced a separation between ISPs and telcos. That was lost somewhere in "telecom deregulation". We need it back.
Now we have the worst of both worlds - unregulated carriers with monopoly right of way rights.
Inception. I wonder how many layers you had. :)
Ant(Dude) @ Quality Foraged Links (AQFL.net) & The Ant Farm (antfarm.ma.cx / antfarm.home.dhs.org).
More of menace.
"My personal take on Net Neutrality is that ISPs should treat all packets equally. I do not like the idea of being forced to host all my videos on YouTube or another huge site that can afford to make special deals with broadband providers such as Brighthouse, my local cable TV monopoly, instead of on my friend Joe's Globaltap hosting service."
Ugh. Nobody "forces" Mr. Miller to host anywhere. He's more than welcome to host his videos at his friend's Joe's Globaltap hosting service, but is he expecting his friend to do this for free or give him some flat rate $5/month service? Does Mr. Miller expect his friend Joe to eat the Internet transit costs of $3 to $10 per Mbps per month which might be thousands of dollars a month for popular content while he free loads off of his friend's hosting service?
The point being made in the article is that, without good rules in support of net neutrality, ISPs can place artificial limits on the effective throughput of a server per connection over their network. This is different from the server's normal performance limitations, as the ISPs can (and probably will) do this on a discriminatory basis in order to make their affiliated services look better. One could place their video on a server that's quite adequate for the job (and with a connection adequate for their level of traffic) but wind up facing intentional, discriminatory degradation of their content by individual ISPs when customers of those ISPs connect. This is what would "force" people to use a video hosting site like Youtube - in order to host video reliably they would need to either negotiate with all the different ISPs individually to ensure safe passage for their traffic, or else put the video on a site that has addressed this issue already.
I don't know if this would actually be a problem. I expect (of course I am not sure of this) that the ISPs will only direct this kind of discriminatory traffic filtering in cases where, one way or another, there is money to be made. They'll try to block piracy to encourage people to get videos, etc. via (their affiliated) legitimate channels, and they'll extort money from any high-traffic site with deep pockets (especially competitors). But I doubt they would bother with a small site that happens to have a video or two on it.
Bow-ties are cool.
morons who still cant decide whether we should have net neutrality.
fish-memory having morons of course. if they had any kind of memory and cognitive ability, they would realize that net neutrality was the de facto rule of internet up to this point, and major reason for its global adoption, public participation of masses, and its eventual success.
go please, start living in a cave. take your lack of cognition and misconceptions with you.
Read radical news here
Most SPs don't have local competition ... or at least much of it and because of that consumers are stuck with whatever they can get.
When they can explain how South Korea, Taiwan, Japan etc all have 50-100Mbps edge links to consumers... in the U.S. we seem stuck around 10Mbps. There's really no excuse for this.
The SPs already discriminate traffic where/when they can... look at Bittorrent traffic. Comcast and others regularly limit torrent traffic.
If the SPs take it a step further.. what can we expect? Video from Providers NOT affiliated (paying off) your SP may just appear to have crappy video. A VoIP service (skype, etc) may just not have quite the voice quaility it could have because its being QoS throttled by the SP who may have its own voice service.
With limited competition if Net Neutrality doesn't stand then the U.S. is going to fall further and further behind the rest of the world and the rest of our competition.
but Net Neutrality insists on going further to outlaw legal and voluntary premium content delivery services.
If power is sufficiently concentrated, it will tend to concentrate more. ISPs form such a concentration. These premium content delivery services are the tool which they use to concentrate power even more.
I think Net Neutrality proponents are against this concentration of power, and as a side effect are against its mechanism.
(That's my viewpoint, FWIW: that some organizations have way too much power, and the net would be better if they hadn't, and then I'm all for letting people pay more for faster downloads or whatever; see also rapidshare, fileplanet etc.)
Unless you can prove there is too much market power in content delivery (and the evidence suggests otherwise), you can't justify regulation on the basis of speculation. Furthermore, the FCC doesn't really have the power to do this because congress never authorized them to do so and the vast majority of congress opposes FCC's proposed Net Neutrality rules. I mean you have 74 Democrats in Congress plus virtually all of the Republicans opposing this.